


wait for the storm

by fakelight



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Multi, overwrought drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-04-19 19:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14244198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fakelight/pseuds/fakelight
Summary: “She couldn’t close it,” the Chief’s voice crackled over the walkie talkie.“Run.”





	1. don't be afraid if it's a little bit close

Nancy can’t quite believe that it was only a year ago that they were fighting one monster, proud of themselves for taking down a single demogorgon. Now, Jonathan’s firm grip on her hand the only thing keeping her going as a group of three chase them through the ashen woods, all she can think is, _we were so naïve_.

 

 

 

They had done their part, smoke erupting out of Will, heat ebbing out through the patched-up windows and splintered door, sweat cooling on brows, their fragile group holding onto each other, waiting, _waiting_ for confirmation that Eleven had succeeded.

The lights grew brighter, blinding. And then—blackness.

 

“Is that it?” Joyce had asked, her voice swallowed by the dark. “Was that it?”

“I don’t know,” Jonathan replied, looking around, finding Nancy’s eyes, his own glinting in the moonlight streaming in through the boards.

 

“She couldn’t close it,” the Chief’s voice crackled over the walkie talkie.

“Run.”

 

 

She doesn’t know where Mike is.

Her mother, her father. Holly.

 

It’s just the two of them now.

 

They’d lost Joyce and Will, swallowed up in the mist as they ran from the car, wrapped around a tree as they swerved to avoid the monster that had stepped through a gate that had just _appeared_ in the middle of the road, a line in the fabric of the universe. Jonathan called for them, desperate, but Nancy had silenced him, fearful of what could hear them, fearful for what could find them.

They’d made it about a mile, through the empty fields of Hawkins, trying to get to a phone, a house, to assistance of any kind, the walkie talkie unresponsive, silent in her hand. Nancy had placed her foot down, feeling the firm, frozen ground beneath her, and then gasped as her next step trod on ash, disintegrating under her weight, an eerie blue light surrounding them.

“What? Where—”

“No,” she choked.

The Upside Down had come for them, no gate, no tree needed to crawl through, swallowed into its unending desolation.

“Nancy—is this, are we—” Jonathan asked, his hand around her wrist, fear creeping into his voice.

A sound from behind them.

“We have to go,” she’d said, pulling his hand into hers. “We have to go _now_.”

They ran.

 

 

 

They skirt the edges of the woods, spotting monsters from a distance, sprinting across the disintegrating landscape as they are slowly, methodically, chased down. Escaping, each time. Just barely.

Nancy wonders if they’re being toyed with.

She wonders if everyone else is dead.

She doesn’t know how long they wander, hours, days, maybe. Time seeming to pass in fits and spurts.

There’s water in the Upside Down, which is probably poisoning them, but they drink it anyway.

She can’t remember when they last ate. Breakfast at Murray’s, maybe. She’d smiled around her eggs.

She wonders if Murray is dead too.

 

 

They take shelter in a treehouse in Loch Nora (“Have you ever seen one climb?”), clinging to each other there, trying to stay as quiet as possible, breathing shallowly with their lack of protection, hoping their presence will go unnoticed until they can find their way back to the real world, the real Hawkins, the world without the monsters lurking below them.

“What do you think happened?” Nancy whispers, broaching the subject for the first time, crawling back from where she’s been peeking over the edge. Only one now, the other two monsters disappearing into the shadows, presumably to find the others, if they’re still alive, or reinforcements. Nancy doesn’t know which is worse.

She collapses, her back against the wall, her legs stretched out toward where he’s sitting, mirroring him. Her foot pressed against his thigh.

“If Eleven couldn’t close the gate . . . my mom, she said it was coming for everyone else, that’s what Will told her.” Jonathan shakes his head. “I guess it found us.”

Nancy feels the all-encompassing fear, the fear that has accompanied her for the past year, its presence ever familiar alongside the weight of what they’d gone through. She grits her teeth, pushing it down, looking to Jonathan for reassurance, but his face is blank, haunted. Nancy realizes—he’s never been here before.

He may never leave.

“I really . . . ” Jonathan’s voice falters. “I really thought we were gonna make it. Will was gonna be okay. My mom . . . . she wasn’t going to have to worry anymore. We—”

“We?” Nancy asks, her chin lifting as she regards him.

Jonathan makes an attempt at a smile, which dies before it reaches his eyes. “You and me.”

Something in Nancy’s heart clenches.

She pushes herself up, moving silently until she’s sitting next to him, taking his hand, interlacing his fingers with hers. It’s the hand with the scar, and she feels it, a hard ridge across the palm. She squeezes tighter, needing the physical reminder of their previous ordeal, of how they’d accomplished what they’d set out to do. Clinging to it, to the hope, that they can still get out of this somehow.

“What about you and me?”

Jonathan flexes his hand in hers, pulling her closer. Holding her tighter.

“I dunno,” he admits, his gaze hovering somewhere around his knees. “I . . . didn’t think that far ahead. I was just hoping we’d survive the night. But . . . ” he trails off.

“We’d be happy,” Nancy blurts out, decisively. “All of us. We’d go to prom, and to college, and . . . ”

“Please don’t make me go to prom,” Jonathan says, looking down at her. Nancy laughs, a little desperate, leaning her head onto his shoulder.

“I don’t think we’re going to make it to prom.”

Jonathan exhales. “No.”

Nancy tilts her head up, her gaze finding his, the careful way he’s regarding her making her want to cry. He smiles, bittersweet, but the lack of defeat in his face is what makes her raise her head higher, pressing her lips to his.

He doesn’t kiss her back at first, Nancy opening her eyes to find him looking at her, uncertain. “Jonathan,” she says, softly, and the sound of his name is enough, it seems, to bring him back to her.

When he does kiss her there’s a finality to it, like he knows this could be the last time they ever do this, even though the first time was such a short time ago, the knowledge of which makes Nancy want to scream at the unfairness of it all. They should have had longer—months, _years_. A lifetime. But if this is the end, she’s glad she had him, even if only for the moments she did.

Her hands are in his hair, and she hadn’t even realized she’s pressed against him now, up on her knees, his hands slipping under her shirt. Nancy wonders if the monsters can hear them, and then represses the urge to laugh, which they would _definitely_ hear.

“Nance—” Jonathan mumbles against her lips, and Nancy feels the loss of him as he pulls away from her, holding her at arm’s length. He turns his head, alert.

Nancy stays silent, trying to control her breathing. She cranes her neck to look over the edge of the platform, balancing herself with a hand against Jonathan, wondering what he’d heard.

Five. Full-sized. Faces—or lack thereof—turned up toward them.

Nancy inhales a gasp, her grip on Jonathan tightening. “Shit,” she hisses.

Jonathan isn’t listening, shushing her with an outstretched hand. “Do you hear that?” he asks, his head cocked to the side. “Is that—”

It’s muffled but it’s there, a “Hello?” coming from the walkie talkie, almost as if the person on the other side is a whole dimension away, which Nancy realizes, could be the case. “Nancy? Jonathan?”

Another noise penetrates Nancy’s consciousness through the hope bubbling up inside her, a scrabbling sound that takes her a moment to realize is coming from the tree below.

“The dogs,” she says, realizing. She grabs onto Jonathan’s arm. “The dogs, they can climb.”

She’s barely said it when one’s head appears in the empty doorway.

They both lunge away, Nancy lashing out with her foot, catching it in the jaw, or where its jaw would be, if it had one. It falls, knocked off balance.

They can’t stay here.

Jonathan grabs the walkie talkie, but whoever it is is flickering in and out, their messages lost in the chaos. He presses it into her hand.

“Go, whoever that is, Mom—Steve, whoever. Go. Find them, get out of here.”

“Jonathan, no, what—”

“Nancy.”

He says her name like it’s an explanation. Like it’s a reason.

He kisses her hard, fast, his eyes searing, fixed on hers.

And then he’s gone.

 

For the space of a breath, Nancy is frozen.

 

“No,” she says out loud, breaking the spell, forcing herself to the opening, looking down to where Jonathan has jumped, sprawled on the ground in between the monsters looming above.

He isn’t moving.

“Get up,” Nancy breathes, forceful.

 

There’s no way he can hear her, but he does.

 

He’s on his feet in an instant, sprinting across the field behind them, monsters in pursuit.

 

“What was that—Nancy? _Do you copy_! Where—”

The voice on the walkie talkie cuts off.

Nancy ignores it, her eyes focused on Jonathan as he disappears into the mist.

 

She breathes in.

 

 

A shot rings out.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. don't be afraid if there's no wind in my hair

The first thing Steve Harrington does once the headlights abruptly go dark is throw up.

And then he starts to panic.

 

 

Max asks, her nerves betraying her, “They just went out, like out of nowhere. What does that mean?”

“What the shit what the shit what the shit—”

“Dustin, shut up,” Steve snaps, straightening from where he’s hunched over, pushing him toward the car. He feels bad for yelling at the kid, but if he’s being honest with himself, only the fact that he’s the adult of the group is stopping him from doing the same thing, and it wouldn’t look great if almost fully half of them started pacing and repeating themselves.

Mike is staring blankly, his mouth open in a gasp that looks like it’s still ongoing.

“We don’t,” Steve says, grabbing Mike by the shoulder, “know what happened yet. So let’s just go back to the house and wait.”

Mike blinks, swallows, then nods.

 

 

 

The house is empty.

Dustin runs back from checking the rest of the rooms, then says, panicky, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Steve rolls his eyes, and as he does, something _shifts_.

He blinks, but it doesn’t go away, ash floating in front of his face and the living room in front of him covered in the same vines they’d just burned.

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god—”

“Holy shit, holy _shit_!”

“Didn’t we just leave this place?” Steve asks, willing his voice to remain calm, nonchalant, and only halfway succeeding.

He feels like he’s going to throw up again.

 

 

After screaming at the kids to “Calm down, Jesus,” Steve takes stock of where they are, which is the Upside Down, apparently the real thing this time, and how fucked they are, which is very.

Mike is pale, Lucas and Max holding hands so tight it looks like they may never be separated, Dustin pacing and plotting.

“Okay, we need—” he starts, but Mike cuts him off.

“We need?! We _need_?! We shouldn’t even _be_ here, El should have closed the gate by now, why is this _happening_?”

“I don’t know,” Steve tells him, looking him straight in the eye, which he only has to bend down a little to do. He’s seen a lot of Mike over the past year, but it’s like he’s someone else, now. Like he’s aged a decade in the last half hour. Steve feels the same way.

“But,” he goes on, “until we do, we have to find a way to get out of here.”

“We can’t just _leave_ ,” Dustin half-shrieks, gesticulating wildly. “It’s the _Upside Down_.”

“Well, how did we get here? I thought there was a gate, or—”

“If El couldn’t close it . . . ” Lucas says, tentatively, trailing off as Mike wheels around to face him, fire in his gaze.

“Hey—no, we don’t know what happened, remember?” Steve steps in between them, ostensibly to push them apart, belatedly realizing he’s holding the bat in his right hand, almost taking out one of Mike’s eyes.

Which gives him an idea.

 

 

 

After raiding the shed, which is back to (or is, still, he isn’t sure how any of this works) how it was before they turned it into an interrogation room, Steve has the kids armed as best he can.

Mike, the rifle, hoping he’s got some of the natural Wheeler aim. What appears to be an old field hockey stick of Joyce’s for Max. Lucas clings to his slingshot. And a makeshift version of his own bat for Dustin, three nails hastily hammered into a leg ripped from a chair.

“Okay look,” Steve tells them, watching their hands fidget on their weapons, “this isn’t going to be enough if those dogs come back, so I’m gonna go and—”

A chorus of protests overwhelms him.

Steve glares at them. “No, _no_ , I’m going to find some supplies or a way out of here and you guys are—”

“I’m coming with you,” Dustin says.

“No fucking way.”

“ _I’m_ coming with you,” Mike declares, and the look on his face is so murderous Steve almost takes a step back. He finds himself regretting giving Mike the rifle.

“Fine.”

 

 

The Camaro is gone, but there’s a tiny little sedan that Lucas makes a valiant effort at hotwiring, but after the car’s engine sputters to a halt for the third time, they’re forced to look for an alternative.

Max calls over to them once she’s found it leaning against the side of the house, hidden under a mound of ash. The mode of transportation, it seems, for every kid in Hawkins.

Excepting one.

Steve blinks at her, his jaw clenching. “This isn’t going to work.”

“It’s not electric, there’s air in the tires . . . ”

“I, uh,” Steve admits, the words feeling like they’re being pulled from him by the wary stares of four middle schoolers, “don’t know how to ride a bike.”

“Are you kidding me right now?!”

“Look,” he warns. “I own a _car_ , my parents _drove_ me places before that, it’s not my fault you have this weird superiority thing over having to get yourself places under your own power.”

Dustin shakes his head.

 

 

In the end, he balances on the seat as Mike pedals standing up. His feet occasionally skimming the ground, bat in one hand.

He’s almost glad there isn’t anyone around to see how ridiculous he looks.

Almost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steve knows he signed up for this. The second he paused as the lights flickered, hanging off his open car door, he was part of it, the whole monsters and gates and taking a punch thing.

And he’s always going to be a part of it, until he kills it, whatever it is—a monster, five smaller monsters, the self-doubt that comes from finding out the past year of his life has been, as it was so eloquently put, bullshit. (Although right now it seems more likely than not that whatever he’s about to fight is going to end up killing him.)

But now, holding onto Mike for dear life, he wonders just how he became that guy.

 

The guy who went back into the house.

 

He didn’t do it for Nancy, or Jonathan, or even for himself, if he stops and thinks about it.

If he’s honest with himself he doesn’t really know why he did.

It’s probably something he should figure out if he ever makes it out of here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They ditch the bike at the entrance to the neighborhood, the desolation and solitude of the Upside Down more apparent with every house they search through.

It’s just them.

And the monsters.

 

 

The first thing Steve grabs is a second bat.

Three guns, lacking bullets, one of those curved Japanese swords, which Mike slings across his back with glee, leaving his hands free for the rifle.

A few bottles which could be Molotov-ed in a pinch.

It's not enough.

 

 

“How’s it going?” Dustin asks over the walkie talkie. “Did you find anybody else?

Mike presses the button, but Steve grabs his hand before he can speak. “No, and stop calling us, you’re supposed to be hiding. That means _silent_.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Get back in the bathtub, Dustin.”

Dustin doesn’t respond.

Steve nods in satisfaction, turning to the last house they have to search, but before he can find a way in, he hears from behind him, “Hello? Is anyone out there? El?”

“Mike!”

Mike shrugs at him. “What?”

“Get off that thing and keep a lookout, Jesus. I literally just told Dustin to stop, don’t give him an excuse to—”

“Shut up,” Mike says, distracted. “Do you see that?”

Steve looks where’s he’s pointing, across the field in front of them. He squints, unsure of what he’s seeing. More monsters, far enough away they don’t have to hide themselves in an attic for the second time in an hour.

“They’re just . . . standing, under that tree.”

Steve feels something strange in his chest, something like hope and fear and apprehension combined into one lurching feeling.

“Do you think there’s something—someone—there?” Mike asks, giving voice to Steve’s unspoken thoughts.

“I don’t know,” Steve murmurs, his adrenaline spiking. He takes a step forward, almost against his will, then thinks better of it. “We should find a house, wait for them to leave, then check it—”

“Will?” Mike whispers harshly into the walkie talkie. “Is that you? _El_?”

One of the monsters is moving; a dog, climbing.

Steve lunges at him. “Mike, shut up! They’ll hear—”

“Hello? Nancy? Jonathan?”

 

Something falls from the tree.

 

“Holy shit, did you see that?” Mike breathes. “I think—in the tree, is that . . . ” He fumbles again for the walkie talkie, but Steve latches onto the sword on Mike’s back, pulling him into the shadows of the woods behind them.

“We have to hide, they’re going to find us—”

Mike shakes him off, his eyes burning. “It’s Nancy.”

Steve looks back across the field, panic surging.

 

 

Something else falls, a bright flash of white against the dark, hurtling away from the tree.

The monsters give chase.

They’re headed right for the woods.

 

 

Mike’s breathing hard, like he’s been running. “What was that—Nancy? _Do you copy_! Where—”

Steve snatches the walkie talkie out of his hand and throws it behind him. “Shut up, they’ll hear you, they’re coming, we have—”

He looks around.

His head is aching.

There’s nowhere for them to hide.

“Mike, get ready,” he says, dread creeping into his voice.

They’re going to have to fight their way out.

Steve drops what he’s carrying, hands twisting around the bat. Preparing.

Mike swallows, looking pale. He shoulders the rifle, shaky, and it becomes clear in that moment that Nancy’s prowess with a gun has nothing to do with genetics. Steve's heart sinks.

 

A crashing sound from behind them.

Steve whirls around, ready to swing.

Mike steps in front of him.

 

“ _Will_?”

 

Steve doesn’t know how, but Will is standing in front of them, pale, clearly frightened, but alive, his mouth open as he gapes at them.

“I heard—”

Steve doesn’t have the time to think about it.

“Catch, and _aim_ ,” he orders quickly, grabbing the rifle from Mike and tossing it one handed, turning to face the field in the same movement. Setting his feet in preparation, bat swinging up behind him.

Will, thank god, grabs the rifle from the air and checks that it’s loaded with the competence of someone who’s done this before, stepping up beside him, and Steve feels like they might, just _might_ have a chance. 

 

“When I say,” he grits out, his eyes focused on the movement coming from the field in front of them, “shoot.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. there's a breath left in there, all i would say

His lungs are burning.

Jonathan knows the air is toxic, and it’s probably only a matter of time before he collapses, or is caught, but as it is right now, he keeps going. Sprinting across the field, leading the monsters away from Nancy, the only thing he could think of to do in a world where nothing makes sense.

He knows why he did it.

He just hopes Nancy forgives him. And that he’s alive for her to forgive.

  
  
  
  
His only hope is losing them in the trees.

He runs, each step a heartbeat.

 

 

He didn’t ask for any of this. He never wanted any of it to happen, the good, the bad. Will, Nancy, monsters, strange girls with the power to open up worlds.

Before Will, before last November, he’d wanted to keep his head down, escape Hawkins, get to the city, and then his life could _really_ begin.

But he knows there’s no going back to normal, to how things were before, not anymore. He’d said as much to Nancy, on the hood of his car, less than a week ago.

He’d gotten everything he wanted, for one brief, tantalizing moment, Nancy’s hand in his and his brother, healthy, whole. And then it all went to shit.

He’s tired of waiting for things to get better.

He’s tired of waiting.

He just picked the worst possible time to actually do something about it.

  
  
  
  
  


His heart stops when he sees Will—Will, _alive_ , pointing a gun at him, Steve next to him, poised, ready to strike. He skids to a stop.

Will gapes at him.

Steve, to his credit, only blinks once in shock before saying, eyes fixed behind Jonathan, “Duck.”

Jonathan flattens himself to the ground, hands over his head.

“Now!”

Will fires.

Jonathan rolls over to see the closest monster to him fall, assisted by Steve’s swing, some distant part of his mind noticing that his form has improved in the last year. A home run, for sure. Out of the park, or, nails to the ground, as it were.

Mike kicks the monster— _Mike’s here_ , Jonathan thinks, he’ll have to tell Nancy when he gets back to her, even as he realizes this is a very strange thing to be thinking at this moment—but it stays down, even as it writhes slowly on the ground.

Steve takes a step back, extending a hand wordlessly, his gaze still on the field in front of them. Jonathan takes it, pulls himself up, launching himself toward Will, who holds onto him just as tightly for one second, two, before twisting away to reload the rifle. (Where did the rifle come from?)

“Is it just you?” Steve asks.

“Nancy’s in the tree,” Jonathan replies, hoarse. He glances over, his eyes flicking between Steve and the shadowy forms methodically bearing down on them.

“You were the bait?”

Jonathan nods. Steve nods back once, grim, and in that moment, Jonathan remembers that it wasn’t just him and Nancy last year, Steve was there too.

They aren’t dead yet.

There’s still a chance.

“Do you—” he starts to ask, but Steve’s already handing him a bat, a normal one. Even as Jonathan twists his hands around it, the heft a reassuring weight in his hands, he can’t help but feel like something’s missing. He glances at his own bat, looking at home against Steve’s shoulder.

“I want that back, you know.”

Steve laughs, turning to face the field, swinging it up behind him, ready. “No way, man.”

  
  
  


 

 

There are four now, moving across the field with unrelenting purpose.

One for each of them, even as Mike drops whatever it is he’s holding, making their odds even worse. It looks like a sword, Jonathan thinks, but he doesn’t have time to think about how ridiculous Mike having a sword would be.

He feels Steve tense next to him in preparation.

Jonathan breathes out.

Will steps up next to him, the rifle finally loaded.

The monsters stop.

 

 

Jonathan blinks.

  
  
  


 

“What are they doing?” Steve whispers, staying as still as he can, trying not to break the spell.

Jonathan shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

Their faces—or where their faces should be—are all pointed in the same direction.

Pointing at Will.

None of them move. None of them breathe.

“Will, what—”

Will takes a step forward, as if in a dream, even as Jonathan finds himself instinctively edging toward his brother, trying to protect him, even as the rules break down around them.

Steve puts an arm out, holds him back.

Will speaks, two words only, but there’s something—strength, grit, determination—in his voice that gives Jonathan hope for the first time since he can remember.

“Go _away_.”

 

 

They do.

Retreating into the mist, going, gone.

 

 

 

 

“What the shit was that,” Steve says, his voice pitched high, but Jonathan isn’t listening.

“Will,” he says, kneeling down in front of where Will stands, a light in his eyes like dawn breaking. “Are you okay?”

Will nods, and it takes a second for Jonathan to realize what’s different about his face until it hits—the fear is gone.

“Will,” he repeats. “ _Where’s Mom_?”

The fear returns. “We were . . . we were headed for the house, and then . . . “ Will shakes his head. “I was trying to get there, I thought she’d be there, she has to be there.”

Jonathan swallows, nods. He can feel the panic surging, but he pushes it down. They’ve been spared, for the moment.

All he can do is keep going.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They make their way back across the field cautiously, carefully, Will leading, freezing collectively as an oddly shaped shadow casts its way through the mist.

Steve makes a move to the front of their little group, but Jonathan gets there first.

Will pushes past him.

“Go aw—”

“Will?”

He knows that voice.

The mist clears.

They stand frozen, staring at each other.

“Oh my god,” Nancy sobs, and flings herself into his arms.

She’s kissing him and Jonathan forgets where they are, that he almost died, that their entire future hangs on the fact that his little brother has some weird control over the monsters they’ve spent too long fighting, losing himself instead in his relief, his hand cradling her neck and her mouth on his.

He remembers, belatedly, that his little brother and her little brother and her ex-boyfriend-slash-his perhaps friend are standing right behind them. Someone coughs. He ignores it.

Nancy doesn’t. She pulls away, looking over his shoulder, making him step backwards until he runs into Mike, who she pulls into her side, hesitating for only a fraction of a second before she grabs Steve too.

Jonathan pulls Will in, and they stand there, alive, holding onto each other.

Her breathing slows, and Nancy pulls back, taking them in, her gaze soft as it lands on Jonathan, then sharpening, like it did in the woods, like it has so many times since.

She shoves him. Hard.

“Ow—hey,” Jonathan says, staggering from the force of it.

“Why.” Her eyes blazing, piercing into him.

Jonathan looks around for support, not finding it, Steve and Mike and Will staring at the ground, the sky, edging away.

“I—”

“You and me, that’s what you said, _you and me_. And you just _left_ , I thought you were _dead_ , I thought I’d _lost you_ , just like . . . ” Her voice falters, rough with emotion, and all he wants to do is pull her back into his arms.

She breathes out.

“Don’t leave me again,” she says.

Nancy pulls his hand into hers, her fingers catching on his scar, like before.

There’s nothing left for him to do but agree.

 

 

 

 

They give Nancy the sword Mike has failed to utilize successfully thus far, the croquet mallet she’d been using falling apart after one too many whacks to a demo-dog.

“Okay,” she says, looking around. “Let’s get out of here. Where’s the car?”

Steve grimaces. “Yeah, about that—cars don’t work. _Nothing_ works.”

Nancy frowns at him. “Then how’d you get here?”

Steve gives her a look.

 

 

 

 

They can only find two bikes, but as Steve balances on the seat behind him, he says, with relief, “This is a lot better than riding with little Wheeler, your brother’s bike is _tiny_.”

“I can’t believe you don’t know how to ride a bike,” Jonathan pants he pedals them up the hill, glancing over at Mike and Nancy beside him, Nancy looking surprisingly at ease even as her head swivels around keeping watch, Will leading, his hospital gown glowing in the blue light.

“Don’t you start on me too,” Steve warns.

They ride through a deserted Hawkins, their tires muffled by the ash on the ground.

Jonathan spots a familiar store and calls out to Will, Mike skidding to a stop behind him. His eyes meet Nancy’s and he knows she’s thinking the same thing he is.

 

 

 

 

They find guns, bullets, everything they’d used last time. Jonathan sets Steve to hammering more nails into the extra bat, reclaiming his own with a triumphant grin, to which Steve rolls his eyes.

He finds Nancy in front of the bear traps.

Her eyes glinting with exhilaration.

 

 

 

 

They make it back to the house, fueled by something that feels like hope—or at the very least, preparation.

“Mom?” Jonathan calls, rushing into the house, the living room covered in ash and vines and looking ominously abandoned.

“Dustin? Lucas? Get out of the bathtub, guys, we’re back,” Steve says over him, pushing past.

  

There’s no response.

 

 

The house is empty.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
